Without Words
by the third lion
Summary: Sark. Irina. One month. One cell. No dialogue. (not a 'ship -checks age difference and whistles)


Summary: Sark. Irina. One month. One cell. No dialogue.  
  
Dedication: For eretria, whose work reminded me that music, though not vocalized, can be words too.  
  
She was the first to arrive.  
  
Admittedly, they hadn't caught her out of a sudden and rare flash of brilliant teamwork. Even the CIA had doubts as to whether they could capture Irina Derevko. No, she had turned herself in.  
  
Her ex-husband was wary, her daughter stubbornly mistrustful. The director of operations was thrilled at the thought of actually having "The Man" in custody. The tech, like many of the employees in and around the Center of Operations, was nervous at the thought that a devious criminal mastermind on the government's Ten Most Wanted list was downstairs in a glass cell.  
  
Kendall won the argument over what to do with her. They detailed Agents Jack and Sydney Bristow to obtain information from her, and ignored the fact of her existence during missions that did not concern her or her knowledge.  
  
It was the last day of the second week when they decided that using her as a source of information was not as preferable as executing her. Kendall ranted in shocked outrage at the presumption of the woman, disabling the entire Echelon network from an office computer – his computer – right under the noses of the CIA's finest. The elder Bristow said nothing, jaw locked with so much tension that a muscle twitched and jumped uncontrollably in his cheek. Sydney stalked around the office with a combination of disgust and righteous sorrow in her eyes. Marshall remained nervous, and Vaughn and Weiss displayed regret but no surprise. Irina was marched back to the cell by two large guards, smiling cattily as if pleased with some private secret.  
  
Three days later, he arrived, chained and shackled and glaring bloody murder at the men escorting him. Unlike her, he'd been most reluctant to partake of the Agency's hospitality. They'd caught him outside the center of operations with two dozen masked men and a large number of explosives. He'd gone down fighting, with a nasty series of burns and bruises and four more men to add to his list of kills. They'd been forced to keep him elsewhere until the damaged sections of the building had received sufficient repairs to ensure that they would not fall down on the hard- working agents inside.  
  
They put him in her cell. Bristow Senior again argued against it, supported by his daughter, who stubbornly faced Kendall with crossed arms and a determined glint in her eyes. The rest of the CIA didn't see the point of separating them. There was only one high-surveillance cell in the building, and it wasn't as if they could plot to escape together with no less than six heavily armed guards literally breathing down their necks. Besides, Sark's rescue-attempt-gone-awry had proved that the CIA was, if nothing else, impenetrable.  
  
The entire office gathered around a single monitor screen linked to the camera outside the cell to watch him formally be incarcerated. Silly Sark joins Irritated Irina, Weiss snickered before Vaughn's elbow shut him up.  
  
The door was opened and he was shoved in without ceremony. The guards closed it again with a squeak and the peculiar clanging of glass. He stopped directly inside the door and turned wary eyes upon her.  
  
Her expression remained closed.  
  
Sark winced, the movement no more than a slight tightening of the muscles around his eyes. Her impassable face became narrowed eyes and a thinned mouth. With a few hesitant steps, he moved towards her, slowly. He almost seemed...afraid. She rose from her seat on the cot in one quick, fluid motion and wrapped him in her arms.  
  
The motion was incredibly maternal – Irina looked like a mother embracing a young but adult child. The tension in Sark's shoulders vanished as he buried his face in her shoulder and tentatively returned her hug.  
  
She broke away after a few short seconds and seated herself on the bed she'd occupied seconds earlier. He followed her silently, gingerly leaning against the edge, as if afraid that it would collapse under their combined weight.  
  
They faced each other, silent.  
  
She cocked her head to the side and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. She said nothing, but Sark sighed and looked down at his hands, briefly, before meeting her gaze with an unapologetic one of his own, stubbornness written in his jaw.  
  
Something flooded her eyes, then – sympathy? Amusement? – and she folded her legs neatly, patting the space beside her. With another wary look at the metal bindings supporting the bed, Sark scooted backwards and lay down with his head resting on her knee. She smoothed his blond curls fondly, watched as his eyes fluttered closed into a semblance of sleep, rested her own head against the wall in a posture of rest.  
  
When the light from the one tiny window dimmed into nothingness, he slipped off the cot and onto the floor without a word. She tossed the blanket down to him and he fidgeted slightly before lying absolutely, utterly still, looking nonchalant, if not comfortable.  
  
Two days later, she was conspicuously for several hours, during which Sark paced the small confines incessantly and glared at the guards. He stopped at once when she returned, unspoken questions in his eyes. She shrugged, as if to say, "What can one expect?" He nodded minutely and returned to the bed, staring at his hands in silent contemplation.  
  
Most days, they spent in silent meditation, in identical postures of stillness and solitude, but not necessarily oriented in either opposite or similar directions. Other days they exercised, their movements identical but out of order and further differentiated by styles – his clipped and efficient, hers fluid and practical. The original sleeping arrangements continued. The CIA didn't offer another bed, and they didn't ask for one.  
  
Week three day seven, he left the cell and returned with a bloody nose. Wordlessly, she tended to it, not once looking him in the eye. When he shifted uncomfortably to inform her that they'd lavished their attentions on his arm, too, she helped him put it back in place, calmly ignoring the harsh, quick breathing that signaled his pain.  
  
The trials began the next day. He was first, alone, fidgeting with his hands, but with enough self-assurance to gaze condescendingly at his escorts. She stood before the glass door, hands clasped behind her back as if reviewing her faint reflection in the transparent surface.  
  
When he returned, long hours later, Irina glanced up from the one book in the cell and observed his tired face. He quirked a tiny smirk at her, and she nodded slowly – got tired of holding that in place, I see – and stood. At night, she grabbed the blanket and headed to the floor without hesitation. He paused, staring absently at her without expressing comprehension of the image impressed upon his retinas, and took the bed.  
  
He came back the next day, quirked another small smirk at her, and pushed up against the wall to meditate. In response, she reached for his hand and drew a line across it, slowly, ending it abruptly at the wrinkle that palmists would have called his life line, had they ever had the chance to study Mr. Sark's hands. He nodded, and she rose to move to the other side of the cell.  
  
Her trial encompassed the military tribunal for the third, fourth, and fifth days of the fourth week, all of which she was conspicuously absent from the cell for seven hours, on average. Each time she reentered, her cellmate arched one blond eyebrow and stared pointedly at the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. She snorted, indelicately, and faced somewhere else. He always smiled in self-satisfaction at that.  
  
The next day, Kendall came down to the cell, flanked by Agents Bristow. He read her sentence – death by lethal injection – for crimes of grand theft, arson, and the premeditated murders of at least forty men and women. She gazed at him calmly throughout the recitation, eyeing him with faint but undeniable amusement. At the end of it, she turned to the twenty- something Brit and smiled. Bristow Senior escorted her out.  
  
The next day, Kendall appeared for a repeat performance, this time accompanied by the younger Bristow and Agent Vaughn. An anonymous guard chained his hands together as Sark listened to Kendall inform him that grand theft, arson, seventeen counts of terrorism and nearly thirty assassinations were, in fact, punishable by the death penalty. He didn't smile. He smirked.  
  
Kendall wrapped up the document he'd brought and nodded to the black- clad guards outside the glass door before leaving, Bristow and Vaughn trailing reluctantly in his wake.  
  
On the monitor upstairs, accompanied by guards, Sark's figure left the cell and walked off the screen. 


End file.
